1893. ] NEW YORK ACADEMY OF SCIENCES. 131 
In an interior view of a laboratory of the fifteenth century, 
by Vriese, very sumptuous appointments are seen ; a lofty room 
with tiled floor, furnaces on the right under an overhanging 
hood, an altar on the left before which the alchemist prays on 
his knees, in the centre a table covered with apparatus, books, 
and musical instruments, in the foreground an alembic, over- 
head a lamp swinging from a ceiled roof, The whole indicates 
wealth and luxury contrasting strongly with later pictures of 
the laboratories of impoverished alchemists, 
The interior of workshops of alchemists of the sixteenth 
century have been artistically painted by the celebrated Flemish 
artist David Teniers. Of these interiors I am acquainted with 
six different styles, having, however, many features in common. 
The alchemists, influenced by the atmosphere of mystical 
associations prevailing in astrology and the black art, affected 
fanciful names for pieces of apparatus bearing accidental 
resemblance to objects in nature ; the body of an alembic was 
a ‘“cucurbit’’ or gourd ; an alembic-head without a beak was a 
‘‘blind alembic”; if the beak was joined to the body so as to 
make a circulatory apparatus, it was a “pelican,’’ owing to its 
outline resemblance to this bird ; two alembics joined by beaks 
were ‘‘twins’’; a flask with a very long neck wasa ‘‘ bolt-head ”; 
a flask with its neck closed before the blowpipe was a ‘‘ philoso- 
phic egg.’’ Again, the cucurbit surmounted by the alembic- 
head was symbolically called “ homo galeatus,’’ a man wearing 
a helmet. 
A special form of furnace much extolled for alchemical 
operations was an ‘“‘ athanor,” deathless, because the fire could 
be maintained indefinitely. The residuum of any distillation 
was a “caput mortuum,” death’s head. A cone-shaped bag for 
filtering was early known as ‘‘ Hippocrates’ sleeve”; the 
operating of closing a flask by fusing the neck was applying 
the ‘‘seal of Hermes’’; fusing of two metals was their 
“‘marriage.’ A still more extravagant nomenclature was 
applied to chemical substances themselves, but of these and of 
the characters employed to designate them I have already 
addressed the Academy (December 11, 1882, and March 12, 
1883). A single example will suffice. Basil Valentine wrote : 
‘‘The greater the quantity of the eagle opposed to the lion the 
shorter the combat; torment the lion until he is weary and 
desires death. Make as much of eagle until it weeps, collect 
the tears and the blood of the lion and mix them in the 
philosophical vase.’’ Thatistosay: ‘ Dissolve the substance 
-and volatilize it.’’ 
In Iheronimus Brunschwick’s Liber de arte distillandi compositis 
